Even a bit late, gift saves family's year

Wednesday is 12-12-12, which for me is the coolest date of the year. I know we've had triple numbers since the start of the millennium, but I love this one. It might be that it's the last one, but it's probably because had we not lost him to Alzheimer's/Parkinson's on Jan. 16, 2007, my dad would have turned 90 on Wednesday.

Wednesday is 12-12-12, which for me is the coolest date of the year. I know we've had triple numbers since the start of the millennium, but I love this one. It might be that it's the last one, but it's probably because had we not lost him to Alzheimer's/Parkinson's on Jan. 16, 2007, my dad would have turned 90 on Wednesday.

He loved to rattle off his birth date: 12-12-22.

Something reminds me of my dad every day, but the memories are even stronger this time of year. It's not just that his birthday came in December, but my dad absolutely loved Christmas. When we made Christmas lists for Santa as kids, he always made one, too. December would approach and he'd say, "I better get my list done."

Once Christmas arrived, he was like a kid, reveling in every part of it. He'd grown up impoverished, as did most kids of the Depression, so being able to have a big Christmas celebration with his kids meant a lot to him. To this day, my mom will watch home movies of Christmases past and wonder how, in the days before credit cards, she and my dad could put so many gifts under the tree for their brood.

They always made Christmas special, but the best Christmas ever, hands down, was in 1968.

It wasn't because I received some much anticipated toy, or a bicycle. Frankly, I can't remember that many specific Christmas gifts from my childhood beyond a Chatty Baby doll when I was 4, my Barbie, and the toy typewriter that actually typed - and we all know where that led.

In 1968 I was 10, the youngest of five children. My eldest sister was 20. The five of us attended five different schools at the time, and my stay-at-home mom was forever carting one of us to them.

She was 44 years old in 1968, and also pregnant. I was too young to understand the risks involved in a late-age birth. My siblings and I were just thrilled at the prospect of having a baby in the house.

The doctor had predicted a Thanksgiving birth, but Thanksgiving came and went with no delivery. So did the first week of December. And the second. And the third. Finally, my mom insisted the baby be induced.

"I've got five kids at home and I'm not spending Christmas in the hospital," she told her doctor.

He arranged to induce labor on Dec. 19, which happened to be my parent's 23rd wedding anniversary. After several hours of no success, the doctor was prepared to send my mom home and wait for nature to take its course.

"If I go home without a baby, they won't let me in the house," she told him.

He tried again and around 7:30 p.m., an 8 pound, 1 1/2 ounce baby boy was delivered.

At the last minute my mom couldn't bring herself to watch the birth. She was too afraid something might be wrong with this baby.

It had not been a good year for my mom. She was sick a lot during the early months of her pregnancy. By June, her father, the sweetest grandfather in the world, was seriously ill, having had several small strokes. His doctors weren't sure he'd live much longer, and she made a trip to Oregon to see him. My grandmother was caring for him, refusing to send him to a convalescent hospital. When my mom arrived in late June, my grandmother had also just reupholstered her living room furniture and painted the house.

"You have got to slow down or you'll be the one who gets sick," my mom told her.

Two weeks later, on July 10, 1968, my grandmother suffered a heart attack. Ten days later, when attempts to insert a pacemaker failed, she died, at age 76.

My grandfather ended up in a convalescent hospital. When we visited in August during our traditional family vacation, his memory was lost.

In early November my aunt called from Oregon to tell us my grandmother's sister had died of a heart attack. In early December, my grandfather died. My mom couldn't make the trip for either service.

My mom told me one day she went out Christmas shopping and she sat down at the counter of Woolworth's for a cup of coffee and just started crying. It was all too much.

It was the same feeling she had when her baby arrived. She just couldn't bear the idea of one more bit of sad news.

The baby boy, named Christopher, was a perfectly healthy bundle of joy, the best gift a family could ever receive. He lit up our lives, changed our family dynamic forever. Teased now as the favored baby of the family (I called him "The Little Prince") he's now a doctor of philosophy, teaches at Cuesta College in San Luis Obispo and has published a book on the history of the Bible.

The feeling of relief that came when he arrived healthy and happy is comparable, believe it or not, to an episode of "From the Earth to the Moon," a Tom Hanks-Ron Howard miniseries that aired in 1998 on HBO.

The fourth episode, entitled "1968," weaved the efforts of NASA to send Apollo 8 to orbit the moon and chart a plan for the moon landing with current events of the year, including the Tet Offensive in Vietnam, the assassinations of Martin Luther King Jr. and Bobby Kennedy, the anti-war protests in the U.S. and around the world, and the Russian invasion of Czechoslovakia.

The flight went smoothly and the three Apollo 8 astronauts - Frank Borden, Jim Lovell and William Anders - during a broadcast from their lunar orbit on Christmas Eve, took turns reciting Genesis. Two days later, as they were safely heading home, someone at NASA read to them some of the telegrams they'd received. One came from Charles Lindbergh. Another was from President Lyndon Johnson. A third was from a Mrs. Valerie Pringle, who simply said, "You saved 1968."

Seeing that scene as an adult makes my cry. I know, too well, what it means.